


read it beginning to end

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Vignette, mulder and scully are dorks about books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7145378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He stays up late reading Moby-Dick by lamplight, and lays it all out for her at the end of a chapter in pencil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	read it beginning to end

**Author's Note:**

> vignette inspired by an xfwritingchallenge prompt on tumblr that literally sat in my docs for months until i dug it back up because of boredom. also i had a headcanon that mulder wrote notes to scully in books, which led to this. covers the expanse of the show, because i went a little overboard.

Less than a year into their partnership, and Scully’s already hiding balled up Kleenex in her fist when she exits the bathroom off of his hospital room. Since Mulder can tell that she is not a person who likes for people to know she has been crying, he shoots out an attempt at distraction as she sits beside his bed and fills out forms. “Hey, Scully,” he says, ignoring the dull ache in his leg.

She looks at him over her glasses, skin around her eyes rubbed raw. He pretends not to see. “What’s your favorite book?”

She smiles shakily. “ _Moby-Dick_. My father read it to me when I was a little girl.”

Oh. _Oh_. He feels like an idiot almost instantly. “I’ve never read it,” he says, forcing his voice to go light.

Scully raises an eyebrow at him. “You mean your high school didn’t read it?”

“No, we stuck to stuff like _The Scarlet Letter_.”

She smiles a bit wider, and tells him to try and get some rest, if he can. Mulder guesses that this subject isn’t over with by a long shot, and he is right. Weeks later, when he returns to duty, a copy is sitting out on his desk. “Take it,” Scully says. “In case you ever have any spare time. There’s no ultimatum on when you need to return it.”

He flips through the pulpy paperback with two fingers. “Scully, I can’t take your copy.”

“My dad actually left me his copy in his will,” she says. “So it’s fine.”

He opens it up that night. Her name is written in the upper right corner of the first page: _D. K. Scully_.  The letters are neat and prim, the steady handwriting that he has grown all too used to in the past few months. He lets the book fall closed.

* * *

A few months after their partnership has ended, and he sleeps with a hand curled around the cross he is wearing, and dreams half-baked nightmares of lights in the sky, and Scully’s wide, terrified eyes. He looks for signs of her in the pages of her former book. He wonders if she is the type of person to make notes in the margins, philosophical thoughts on the motives of Ahab and the symbolism of the white whale. But the book is void of any sign of her, besides her name in the top corner of the first page. He traces her carefully formed letters with one finger, and puts the book aside. Reading it would be almost like giving in, he thinks, and so he digs out her thesis, because he can hear echoes of her voice when he reads it now.

* * *

He makes notes to her in her medical book, a large green volume she keeps on the bookshelf. He makes bad jokes in scrawly pen-blue handwriting along the diagrams and Times New Roman medical jargon. One time, she picks it up and opens it, and then gives Mulder a look like she wants to laugh and kill him at the same time.

He asks her why she named her dog Queequeg, and she tells him that it was the name of the harpoonist in _Moby-Dick_. If she wants to know why he hasn’t read the book she gave him well over two years ago, then she doesn’t ask.

* * *

She hides a different kind of Kleenex in her fist now, and he can always see it coming, recognizes the smears of red that don’t come easily off of the palms of her hands. She solves cases like she isn’t dying, and hides her cancer behind her strong surgeon’s voice. Mulder would prefer a quick loss to this long, slow slide, if he has to lose her at all, because it is torturous to watch the life drain out of her.

He reads her journal, the things she wrote for him, and thinks it wrong that he doesn’t have some long monologue, or confessing letter, to give to her. He should lay his feelings out for her, spread them out like tarot cards so that she can read his future (because it is bleak without her). He stays up late reading _Moby-Dick_ by lamplight, and lays it all out for her at the end of a chapter in pencil. He wants to give it to her but doesn’t know how, wants her to see it but doesn’t want to give her one more burden to worry about. She won’t leave if she knows that he loves her - which is exactly what he wants, but she seems so tired. She doesn’t need to be worried about him as she dies.

She tells her that she is cancer-free, and he decides not to show her the book as he holds her close.

* * *

She leans into his side as he opens up the book, and slides his glasses up his nose. “At least you finally got around to it seven years later,” she teases him.

“Actually, I read this a long time ago,” he says, grinning without looking at her.

“Mulder!” She laughs and tugs him towards her. He puts the book down on the bed and kisses her. She laughs again, and leans up to kiss him back.

* * *

She finds the box in his closet when she’s wearing one of his shirts, sleeves falling past her fingertips. _Scully_ , it says in his familiar scribble in black Sharpie across the left flap of the cardboard top. She almost sobs as she touches the letters tentatively. The box wasn’t included in his will (which it wouldn’t have mattered, everything was left to her anyway, she is really close to moving into his apartment, good for the baby or not). She digs her fingers in under the tape and pulls it open.

It isn’t anything incredibly meaningful, exactly. No poignant last message. A few pictures that she tacks onto the wall on impulse. A crudely drawn sketch of the Flukeman. Some articles by F. M. Luder, and a couple written by her, paperclipped together. Her senior thesis, the photocopy dogeared. Her old copy of _Moby-Dick._

She has to put the book down when she finds it - a note written on one of the larger margins. It’s all sloppy handwriting and intricate language, and so very Mulder that she finally does sob.

He loved her. That much is clear, and from the scribbled handwriting, she thinks he may have loved her for a long time. It’s hard to read the first time, and takes a lot longer than normal. She has to go to the bathroom and retch, and she isn’t sure if it’s because of the baby or the note. Probably both. The second time gets easier, although she has to repeatedly wipe her nose and pull his quilt tighter around herself. The third time, she almost thinks she can hear his voice. It’s been long enough that she would’ve expected to have forgotten it.

* * *

His bedroom is dark and unfamiliar, untouched for months, nearly the entirety of her pregnancy. His bed is made but the sheets smell like her. She’s been sleeping here. Her copy of _Moby Dick_ is on his nightstand.

Mulder sits on his bed and flips through the pages. He dimly remembers reading it, but feels like that might’ve been a long time ago. He stops on a page filled with his handwriting.

The front door groans as it opens. “Mulder?” she calls out.

“I’m in-” He clears his throat, and says, “I’m in the bedroom.”

She enters, hand pressed against the swell of her stomach. Her baby. Scully pregnant is still a jarring sight, and he hates that clench in his stomach when he sees her. “I thought you might not come back.”

“I would always come back,” Scully says firmly. She walks to the bed, stops just out of his reach. “I read it,” she adds quietly, motioning to the book. The page addressed to her. _Dana_ , he’d written before crossing it out and writing _Scully_ in it’s place. “When you were gone. It was in the box in your closet with my name on it.”

Oh. Mulder studies the words. Sharp, messy language, falling all over the place. If he’d ever said it out loud, he would’ve stumbled over his words, and tried to cover up his mistakes with dry jokes. She either would’ve glared or laughed.

“It was a… comfort,” she adds, and intakes a sharp breath, like she is about to cry.

“Scully,” he starts, because if he doesn’t, he’ll regret. He is still haunted and still feels a weight on his chest like he can’t breathe, sometimes, but she is just as haunted, and they need each other. Or he needs her, at least. “I’m sorry.”

She watches him, hands still pressed against her stomach.

He doesn’t know how to apologize. The images are still behind his eyelids, and they are clearly not going to go away. But she… she could. And he doesn’t want that. “I still mean every word,” he adds.

Scully doesn’t answer, but moves to sit pressed against him. He shoves the book off of his lap, and wraps an arm around her shoulder. She ducks her head against his shoulder. “I mean it, too,” she whispers.

* * *

Scully’s in the bedroom with the baby when he gets out of the shower, leaned back against the pillows with William nestled against her. “He asleep?” Mulder asks.

“No, he’s just looking around,” Scully says in a voice he hasn’t heard her use since Emily. “He’s curious. Like his dad.”

Mulder feels the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. He’s a _dad_.

He grabs the thick volume that made it over to Scully’s at some point. “Scoot over, Scully,” he says.

She obliges, giggling a little. “What’re you doing, Mulder?”

“I’m going to read a bedtime story to our son,” he says. _Our son_.

“Starting him off with something hard, aren’t we?”

“Come on, Scully, we’ll raise a smart boy.”

She grins up at him, settling against his side. “Okay, then.”

He flips open the book. Scully’s added his name in pen underneath hers on the first page. _F.W. Mulder_. He wonders if they’ll add Will’s name (and which last name they’d go with.) He starts reading. He doesn’t not stumble on the words. He tickles his son’s small foot with a finger absently, causing the boy to laugh and kick.

He does not tell Scully about what Kersh told him.

* * *

 

They stop at estate sales on lonely roads. For fun, for something to do. For little knick knacks they may need. And Scully’s been hinting at getting a house soon, and they will need furniture. Her hair is long enough to pull back into a ponytail, but the strands still slip out all over the place.

Mulder makes it a point to avoid sales with baby things, but sometimes, he slips up. There’s a table piled with books, and Scully stops to look through it. She left all her books in her apartment. Doggett had sat beside her on the couch and given her a hug, and said, “I think we can break Mulder out. Are you going to go with him?” She’d gone without a second thought, and without going back for anything. She thought she’d have everything she needed, and the one thing she wanted was what she couldn’t have. But. Her father’s copy of _Moby-Dick_ , and the copy with Mulder’s love letter in it are both still on her shelves. Or,well, she supposes the entire damn FBI has read it by now. Still, words have always been her safe place, and she wants to burrow into black typeset on white pages, for her muddled thoughts to blur with plot, dialogue, and characters. She wants Mulder to read to her in hotel rooms to drown out the voices of strangers. She pushes aside ragged hardbacks and torn paperbacks, searching for her old favorite, until she comes across a stack of children’s books. She picks up one at random, one she remembers. She had taken William to the library sometimes, gone through the children’s section while humming in his ear to make him laugh and grab onto her hair. She picked out one of these books and read to him. She opens the book at random. _This book belongs to_ it says in colorful blocked letters, and then below, in the white space, it says _William_. 

Scully whimpers slightly. Her hands grow sweaty, and the book slides out of her hands and onto the grass. Mulder is at her side in a second, winding an arm around her waist. “Scully, it’s okay,” he says soothingly. 

She shakes her head harshly. She will not have a breakdown here, will not get caught by small town police. They are smarter than that - they are fucking FBI. “I’m fine,” she says sternly, toeing the book with her shoe. She does not pick it up. Mulder leaves his paraphernalia on a table and follows her to the car.

Their William is not a baby. Their William is probably that teenager taking up the money behind the card table, which could be why they are selling his books. Their William is not her William. But her stomach grows cold at the thought of her William, and Mulder must sense it and react similarly, because he’s quiet in the car. They buy gas station sandwiches for dinner and park out in a field under the stars. The field is empty- it’s winter. Scully eats on the hood of the car, and watches Mulder pace the field. He is nervous - he has on the gun Reyes slipped into his hand at their last meeting point. He’s worried they’ll be caught.

“Mulder,” she says when he is in earshot. “Come here.” She tugs him closer. “Get up here and look up,” she says. “I want to look for UFOs.”

If stars are souls, she wants to make sure William’s isn’t up there. And that theirs aren’t, either.

* * *

It’s a Sunday cold enough that Scully refuses to move out from under the knit blanket on the couch. And they have the convenience of Mulder being able to show his face in public again, so she sends him to town for groceries. “get milk,” she says.

He comes back with a paper bag of books. “Library was having a sale,” he says innocently. “I got milk, too.” He shows her the carton before putting it in the fridge. 

Scully looks at the bag with some interest. “What did you get?”

Mulder grins. “Your old favorite.” He pulls out a book about the Super Bowls, with a flourish, an unspoken _ta-da_.

Scully rolls her eyes. “That joke got old _fifteen years_ ago.”

“Okay, fine, I got your _real_ old favorite.” He pulls out a hardcover copy with a cartoon whale on the dust jacket, and comes to sit beside her on the couch.

“Good job,” she says approvingly. He sets the book down on her lap, and wipes his dusty hands on the couch. At her glare, he shrugs, and pulls the blanket so that it covers his own lap. She snatches it back.

“So, how do you want to do this?” Mulder asks as he gets under the blanket beside her. His feet are cold against hers, and she shivers and leans against his side. “You read, or I read?”

“We’ll take turns,” Scully says decidedly, kissing his cheek and grabbing the book.

* * *

She left her books in his office. _The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine_ , that was a present from him. He isn’t sure if it was a countered move, but he reads them anyway. It’s all too damn formal and complicated, and goes right over his head. He pretends he’s in school, writes down things he doesn’t understand. Maybe he’ll ask her ~~if~~ _when_ he sees her again. 

He starts writing to her, but since he can’t email or or text her or call her, he writes to her in the margins of her books again. _Hey, Scully, I read this amazing article on the probability of cryptids. Scully, you’ll never believe it, but I think I saw something in the woods last night. Scully, I need you to come tell me I’m crazy. I need a reminder. Scully, call me. I want to talk to you. Scully, I miss you. Scully, I love you. Scully, I want you to come home._

Eventually, he replaces the empty spaces on the shelf. He tries to do the impossible and forget about her.

* * *

“Hey, Mulder,” Skinner says one day as he is leaving the office - _his_ office, _their_ office, again. “I have a couple things for you.” Mulder follows him back to his office. It’s been redone, and a new secretary sits at the front desk. 

Skinner pulls a plastic bag out of his desk. “Most of the evidence from Scully’s apartment was auctioned off a long time ago,” he says. “But - I kept something for you.”

He hands him the bag. Inside is Scully’s old copy of _Moby-Dick_. Not her father’s copy - the nice, antique hardback that said _To Starbuck, Good sailing - Ahab_ inside - but the paperback she gave him in their office 23 years ago. The one he poured his heart out in, the one he read to their son. 

“You should have kept her father’s copy,” he says, and takes it.

Mulder flips back through it under the lamplight outside of the building. He reads his note - the pencil has faded a little but it’s all still there. And he still means every damn word, even twenty years later. Even with cancer and family members and two kids and thousands of miles and years of pain behind them, he still means them. He will mean them in the years ahead, he’s sure Sometimes he hates that he is so tied to this woman, that nothing could ever make him stop loving her. Some would call it a weakness - he thinks it makes him stronger. 

He uses his key to get back into the building, and walks back down to the office. The FBI’s most unwanted, right down here in the basement where they belong. He will get her a nameplate soon. Maybe even tomorrow. And a desk - he’s a fucking idiot, but maybe after all these years, it’ll be a grand romantic gesture instead of a make-up for the past. He leaves the book on her chair, flips open to the first page. D. K. Scully. F. W. Mulder. W. M. S.

I love you, he mouths.


End file.
